Unlearning

MORE AND LESS

Each day of studying the world leads you to more.
Each day of harmonizing with Dao inclines you to less.
Less, still less, until you do nothing.
Do nothing so that nothing is undone.
To take the world lastingly requires a mind empty of deeds.
A mind yearning for deeds, on the other hand, can never take the world.

-- Laozi's Dao De Jing, Chapter 48, translated by Ken Liu

"Therefore a brāhmaṇa should give up scholarship and remain childlike; when he has given up being a scholar as well as being a child, he becomes wise; and when he has ceased to be both wise and unwise, he becomes a [real] brāhmaṇa.... All else is frustration" (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad III.5). Thus, reflecting the Bhāgavata, one of Rūpa's sixty-four principles of bhakti is "renouncing [the study] of many books" (Eastern Quadrant II.79).

-- Edwin Bryant, Bhakti Yoga: Tales and Teachings from the Bhagavata Purana

I have had Edwin Bryant's book for years now, though I started reading it only a few days ago. It's gotten me into a state I haven't been in for years, that delirium you're in, waiting for the school day to end so you can rush back home and jump into them Hardy Boys, the Harry Potters. Ken Liu's book sits in another room and I sample from it once in a while.

Both of them telling me to stop reading so much.

I am unable to.

I haven't been in that state in years? No, that's not true. I was in it at the beginning of 2026, with Robert Caro's Master of the Senate.